Relationship Palaces

The five palaces

Each page reads its palace across all twelve Spirit Guardian communities — the twelve readings a chart chooses between.

The five lenses a bond is read through

These five are not a category invented for these pages. They are the list the Bonding Map runs on: naming a relationship chooses which palace the two charts get compared in, and every one of the five is one of the options.

Two of the five split across two palaces, because a Senior and an Heir are two ends of one relationship rather than two relationships. A keeper and their animal ride the same pair.

The group the numbers ignore

Worth knowing before reading any of the five: this is the group the app's scoring engines have least to say about. Parent, Sibling and Successor carry no weight on any of the six Vessel Stat axes, and Parent is the only palace in the artifact table with no entry at all. A chart can be strong here and it will not show up as a taller bar anywhere.

The inversion is the interesting part. Those same palaces carry far and away the most hand-written material in the app's avatar catalogue — the seated readings on Sibling and Successor run to paragraphs where nine of the twelve palaces get a phrase. What the numbers skip, the writing concentrates on, and these five pages are where that writing is.

The other two groups

Three groups, because they are a reader's lenses rather than the chart's own structure. The structure is the four trines and six axes, which cut clean across all three.

• Persona Palaces— the two palaces that describe a person rather than a slice of their life, and the geometry binding all twelve
• Foundation Palaces— the five palaces a life is built out of, and the only five the scoring engine measures

Frequently asked

What are the Relationship Palaces?

Five of the twelve palaces a cast chart divides a life into — Parent, Associate, Successor, Romance, Sibling. They are the five palaces a relationship is read through — one for each direction a bond can run. Every chart has all twelve palaces; what changes from person to person is which of the twelve Spirit Guardians holds each one, and that pairing is the reading.

How does the Bonding Map use these five palaces?

They are the five lenses it offers. Naming a relationship chooses the palace the two charts get compared in: a Senior is read through Parent, a Brother or Sister through Sibling, a partner through Romance, an Heir through Successor, and a colleague or friend through Associate. So the group is not a category somebody invented for these pages — it is the list the board actually runs on.

If I call somebody my Senior, which palace am I read through?

Yours is read through Parent and theirs through Successor, because a Senior and an Heir are two ends of one relationship rather than two relationships. Call somebody your Senior and you are their Heir. Only that pairing and Pet-and-Owner split across two palaces this way; the other three read both charts through the same palace, so both people are measured on the same ground.

Why do most of these palaces carry no Vessel Stat score?

Because the scoring engine has almost nothing to say about them. Parent, Sibling and Successor carry no weight on any of the six axes, and Parent is the only palace in the whole artifact table with no entry at all. What is striking is the inversion: those same palaces carry by far the most hand-written material in the app's avatar catalogue. The palaces the numbers ignore are the ones the writing concentrates on.